Out Marauded
by Darkness Alit
Summary: James and Sirius leave class to find a commotion going on--but they didn't cause it! How will they handle being out-marauded?


Disclaimer: This is _fan_fiction. If I owned it Sirius would have come back, and he and Remus would have given Harry a sense of family & history.

Out-Marauded

Sirius winced a little as he struggled to hold both his bag and Remus' without dropping them. He just had a feeling that Remus wouldn't like his bag dropped, and it was a part of the unwritten Marauder code—when one does a flit and leaves you his things, _don't_ draw attention to whatever he left, or that he left.

James was playing a good second, on that score. He was standing just _so_ at Sirius' shoulder, blocking the second bag from sight from the majority of those passing through the halls.

McGonagall passed them at a brisk pace, frowning at a bit of parchment she had in her hands.

The weight on Sirius' still sore shoulder was removed. "Thanks," Remus whispered, slinging his bag onto his shoulder before walking quickly. "Professor McGonagall?" he called, voice pitched just loud enough to be heard but not so he would be scolded for yelling.

She turned, looking at him curiously. "Yes, Lupin?"

"Sorry to bother you, Professor, but I was wondering if you could recommend a book on the less common permanent transfigurations? I realize it's been quite a while since we covered the topic, but I can't seem to find anything pertinent in the library."

"Trust Moony," James grumbled.

Sirius snorted. "Honestly. Asking for homework-type books when they have nothing to do with class or any probable relevance after graduation."

They shook their heads in mock despair. "We'll have to save him from himself one day, you realize this."

"I do, I do. We'll have an intervention!" Sirius declared, one finger raised into the air.

"A… _what?_"

"Muggle therapy," Sirius explained dismissively. "Source isn't important," he continued loftily. "What is important, is the method!"

James quirked a brow and smirked, adjusting his glasses in a way that appeared scholarly. He cleared his throat. "Method? What method would that be?"

Sirius rubbed his hands together, then spread them wide, framing the halls. "Just picture it, James. Our poor ickle-Moonikins, trapped in the Room of Requirement. Surrounded by empty bookshelves. Stacks of blank parchment and boxes of dry inkwells and broken quills. Nothing in there except a few frogs—chocolate, of course, can't be too cruel to him—and several decks of exploding snap and some gobstones."

"So… intervention is torture?" James summed up.

"Well… yes, but for his own good. It's just wrong to be so involved with books. It's not like he even uses it! He probably knows more spells than five of us would, but he never uses them."

"You know why. He doesn't want to hurt anyone—in any way."

"Which is odd. You know, we should point out that it's really not human nature to be so bloody forgiving and passive all the time."

James rolled his eyes. "He _is_ human."

"No he isn't. I can't say for sure if he's better than humans, or just different, but there's no way he's human."

James scowled, half-ready to scold Sirius and warn him to never, ever say anything remotely similar in Remus' hearing.

But they'd just made it down to the landing just before the Great Hall and their much anticipated lunch, and noticed a great calamity had broken out.

And they weren't the cause.

They shared a quick, bewildered look before shoving their way through the students, coming out near the front of the 'observation ring', as Sirius liked to call the 'safe' area between those watching and those involved.

A familiar crowd of Slytherins were in terrible trouble. There were little wriggling tentacles, fairy wings, elf ears, and various other and assorted bits of creatures growing from random places. Some couldn't stop dancing, one seemed cursed to sing everything, another to only speak in crude limerick. Color randomness abounded—one had hair in five colors, another had mottled skin, a third changed colors with every hiccup, and was cursed with hiccups. The list seemed never-ending.

"This is awesome!" James crowed, grinning viciously at seeing the layers of spells, curses, hexes and jinks. "Wonder why they haven't taken them off?"

The answer was given an instant later—Snape finally found his wand, having had great difficulty finding his balance on his three legs and with several eyestalks. He turned it on himself and garbled something.

A rubber chicken spewed from his wand and smacked him in the nose.

It was only then that Sirius really took in the vast array of unusual things covering the ground around them. Stuffed animals, flowers, confetti, streamers… He looked up, seeing balloons bobbing gently against the very distant ceiling.

"Wow," he breathed. "James?"

"Yeah?"

"I think we've been out-marauded."

James bowed his head in agreeing defeat for a few brief seconds of grief, before he looked up again. "I'm going to run up the stairs and summon my camera!"

Sirius laughed, settling back to enjoy the show. He glanced around the observation ring, seeing several prefects and teachers were now trying to set things right.

James was back before the spells began to unravel, and by then Sirius was making notes.

"Are you bloody kidding me?" James asked, staring at him in disbelief. "I'm all for prank ideas, mate, but that's a bit much."

"Some of them are delayed!" Sirius exclaimed, getting excited by the depths of trickery being uncovered. "When McGonagall took the extended eye thing off Snape, he was covered in green scales!"

James turned sharply, aimed his camera, and got the evidence. "Nice. Just wish it had been one of us."

"SILENCE."

"Gah!" Sirius jumped. He rolled his eyes to the balloons, and clutched his notes to his chest. "I wish old Slugy wouldn't do that."

"He does love the sound of his own voice," James agreed. "Hey—I think we're about to hear who did it!"

Sirius grinned, the two working their way unobtrusively nearer without being noticed. Sneaking regularly came in handy.

"Now then, who—"

"It was bloody Lupin!" one of them howled.

Sirius and James stilled.

"No," Sirius exhaled, blinking steadily. He looked at Remus, who was frozen with wand upraised to try and remove another layer of the spells, standing beside Professor McGonagall.

"I'm afraid you're mistaken," she said crisply. "Lupin, along with Potter and Black were in my class until just minutes ago. Lupin had a question for me, the others waiting for him to finish to come down here for lunch. It could not have been Lupin."

At this there were several protests—more were able to think beyond their anger, frustration and rage.

"One more accusation like that and you will lose your house points! It appears that you were confounded atop everything else," she told them briskly. "Lupin, perhaps you'd better get to lunch anyhow. You're looking a bit peaky. Do you good to eat before your next class."

"Yes Professor, thank you, Professor," Remus said quietly, bowing his head slightly in that old-fashioned display that showed, yet again, that he was raised with a very strict old lady in the house.

He looked directly at them, then tipped his head towards the Great Hall.

Both nodded, having long given up wondering how he always knew where they were on the days prior to the moon. That sort of thing wasn't explained in the oh, _so_ lovely books on werewolves in the library.

Sirius deflected a curse aimed at Remus' back, smirking in some satisfaction when he heard McGonagall shriek something about points and detention when she saw what happened.

Sirius studied Remus as they ate, Remus reading ahead and scribbling on a piece of parchment left-handed—making notes he would barely be able to read for later, for after the moon. His dominant hand was occupied with mimicking the wand movements and getting the book to stay open.

Sirius tapped it with his wand when lunch was almost over, making it stay propped open with the spell Remus had mastered in first year. Remus glanced up, not really focusing on him, mumbled a 'thanks' around a bit of pudding, and went back to studying.

"It was you."

Remus' eyes snapped up and cleared, focused on him.

His quiet words broke into James' list of everything—he was giving Peter the sadly under-played version of events, mostly because Lily was near enough she could catch a word or two here and there.

James turned to them, Peter shifting to listen to whatever had caught James' ear. "What? You heard what McGonagall said. He was with…" James trailed off as he remembered that Remus _hadn't_ been with them the whole time. "But there was no way… He didn't have time!"

"Sure he did, James. He doesn't like us to know it, but he's stronger and faster right about now." A flicker of _something_ flashed across Remus' eyes, and the ninety-nine percent certainty Sirius had had was shifted into one hundred.

"But we were _two floors_ and a quarter of the castle away!"

Sirius cocked his head. "Windows?" he asked calmly.

Remus' blank expression faded, a deeply satisfied, wicked and approving one taking over. He inclined his head. "Indeed."

Sirius let out a breath, not quite a laugh. "How long have you had that excuse to get McGonagall to cover for you?"

"I keep one for every professor, one current enough not to be so old as to be suspicious."

"And you knew which way she would head from the classroom, and how long it would take her to leave…"

"Of course. Did you honestly think we pulled off so many pranks without being caught by sheer dumb _luck_? Most people are really quite ritualistic in their habits. You simply have to watch and remember."

The other three Marauders were silent. It was hard to go from seeing their quiet, oblivious little bookworm to seeing a plotter with all the slippery cunning of a Slytherin.

"But…"

"But _why_?" James asked, scratching at the back of his neck. "Why now? They didn't do anything to you, for _once_. You've been taking everything they've thrown at you since first year like a bloody doormat!"

Sirius saw Remus' amusement, but also saw a slight withdrawal. Remus only withdrew like that when it had to do with his furry little problem, and the answer suddenly smacked Sirius between the eyes. "Hurting him didn't matter, Prongs," he said softly. "But heaven help anyone who hurts his pack."

Remus looked at him again, the approval returning.

Sirius felt like he'd just been patted on the head and given a liver-treat. His tail was wagging.

"But… but they've come after _us_ loads of times, too!" James was still protesting.

Sirius smiled wryly, knowing James was having a hard time believing that their Remus had been the one to do so much damage to so many Slytherins in so little time. "Come on, James. Yesterday was different and you know it. Our attacks on them are generally utterly harmless if a bit humiliating. Their retaliations or provocations are the same. Yesterday, though, they were out for blood. And they got it," Sirius added wryly, feeling aches in places he didn't know he had before they started making themselves known last night.

James grimaced, not liking the reminder. It didn't matter that it had been six or seven Slytherins against only the two of them. Defeat was bitter anyway, though the unfairness of the match did have its soothing properties.

Almost as much as did the salve Remus had dug out of his trunk for them, applying it with fingers far too accustomed to such for one so young and not medically inclined.

Sirius looked away from Remus, only to see James still hovering between a pout and disbelief. He rolled his eyes. "Come on, Prongs! If nothing else, just think of it this way: we were out-marauded by a Marauder, which makes it all so much more enjoyable."


End file.
